Wolff rating: NOT BAD
Plot summary: Young man in dying Pennsylvania steel town looks to a football scholarship to get him out of a grim, blue-collar future.
Biased, pithy comments: Although despite good intentions, this movie fails to rise above its reputation as the movie where a young, nubile pair of soon-to-be-stars took their clothes off. Yup, Lea Thompson (oo, Lea Thompson) and Tom Cruise (yah, whatever) get nekkid, briefly, and all you uniform fetishists will be pleased to know that Thompson starts the scene in her high school band uniform. Ooo, mama! Around that scene (exactly one hour in, for those of you taking notes in the back) is a bland but not entirely unappealing collection of teen movie cliches---the coach who stands in for typical middle-class father/son dysfunction, the biggest game of their lives, the friend with a pregnant girlfriend, etc. Most of the subplots are handled normally and, when it's obvious that they're just going to be a cliche, are then edited out of any further proceedings. It's an OK film from a bygone era (back when the drinking age wasn't 21, when college loans weren't as easy to get, when it was entirely the woman's responsibility to hold back sexual experimentation in a relationship, when denim jackets and mullets were acceptable youth outfits, and back before every last bit of of Pennsylvania's steel industry disappeared), but not lost gold. Its only saving grace is that it doesn't end with a giant football game and a voiceover about ``being victors for the day.''
Other Notes: Like I said, folks, exactly one hour in. Good for girls, too; Cruise has never looked better or gotten more nekkid. Director of Photography is a young Jan duBont, who would go on to make the bombastic ``Speed'' and ``Twister''.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Tom Cruise, Craig T. Nelson, Lea Thompson, Chris Penn.